We had not seen much of Daniel Theis before last night's win over the Detroit Pistons. Daniel underwent meniscus surgery towards the end of last season and has been dealing with a heal issue of late. It all didn't matter last night. Brad Stevens took Theis out of the ice box, and it paid huge dividends.

When Stevens inserted Daniel into the line-up for Al Horford, I doubt that Brad wanted 19 minutes out of him - but he just couldn't take Daniel out. He was everywhere, which is exactly his trademark (per NBA's Marc Amico):

Brad Stevens called Theis’ number with 3:03 remaining in the first quarter. Theis replaced All-Star center Al Horford, and Horford didn’t return to the game until the 2:55 mark of the second quarter. That should tell you all you need to know about what Theis brought to the table.

Baskets? He made them. Rebounds? He grabbed them? Shots? He affected them.

You name it, and Theis did it, all while facing off against arguably the most dominant frontcourt in the NBA to this point of the season in Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond.

Theis scored 17 points on 7-of-9 from the field, 2-of-3 on treys - while adding eight rebounds and notching a team-second-best plus/minus of +20.

Daniel Theis was questionable heading into Saturday night. His ensuing performance? Not so much. https://t.co/S0310CRjvT

There really was nothing unusual about Daniel's terrific off-the-bench performance last night. He was doing that the second half of last season on a regular basis. Because we haven't seen much of him this season, it may have been easy for some to forget how valuable he really is. It was nice to get the Theis-reminder.